Use All of Your Weapons in Tournament Poker (Cards, Chips, Position)
Like in the rock-paper-scissors game, Arnold Snyder suggests that in no-limit hold’em tournaments we might also consider ourselves as in possession of three “weapons” from which we sometimes have to choose when playing hands, namely, our cards, our chips, and our position.
We've all probably played rock-paper-scissors at some point or another. You know, the game where two players count to three, then simultaneously hold out a flat hand (paper), two fingers (scissors), or a fist (rock), with rock beating scissors, scissors beating paper, and paper beating rock.
There's a category of poker players who enjoy thinking about and discussing game theory who have drawn certain connections between the thought processes involved with rock-paper-scissors or "roshambo" and the business of reading one's opponent and making decisions in poker.
Today I wanted to share another way rock-paper-scissors might be compared to tournament poker, something I first encountered being described in Arnold Snyder's 2006 book The Poker Tournament Formula. Snyder uses the game to draw an analogy regarding the various "weapons" we possess when playing a poker tourney, and I always found it a useful way to think about tourney strategy.
In presenting the idea, Snyder alludes to David Sklansky's Tournament Poker for Advanced Players (2002) as having first inspired him, although as Snyder explains his idea applies more to fast-structured multi-table tournaments than does Sklansky's advice.
After introducing the rock-paper-scissors game, Snyder then suggests that in no-limit hold'em tournaments we might also consider ourselves as in possession of three "weapons" from which we sometimes have to choose when playing hands, namely, our cards, our chips, and our position.
Drawing on the way rock-paper-scissors is played, Snyder suggests that our cards (meaning our starting hand) "beat" our chips (meaning our stack size and how it relates to that of our opponents). Meanwhile, chips "beat" position -- that is, having a big stack can enable us to play more hands from early position than we might otherwise. And finally our position at the table "beats" our cards, meaning we can play worse starting hands from late position than we would from early position.
Got it? Cards beat chips. Chips beat position. And position beats cards. Or so Snyder suggests.
Nor can we control our position at the table (which changes every hand). And as far as chips go, everyone is "armed" with the same amount of "ammo" at the beginning of a tournament, and depending on how things go for us our stack may increase and allow us to use it to pressure others, or it might decrease and become a liability for us.
That said, you get the main idea Snyder is trying to get across here -- always remember that in a no-limit hold'em tournament you potentially have multiple weapons from which to draw when going to battle in a given hand.
To me the most useful part of the analogy was how it helps show that cards aren't everything when it comes to poker. In fact, as Snyder goes on to explain, of these three weapons your cards are the least important, mainly because the times you are dealt powerful hands come up less frequently than the times you get to play from late position and/or get to play with a big stack.
Meanwhile, for Snyder position is the most important weapon in your poker arsenal. "In a fast tournament, if you get to the final table," suggests Snyder, "you will have made more money on position than with any other weapon." The fact is, position is a weapon you can use even without a good hand or a particularly big stack.
Chips can be an important weapon, too, and are in fact more relevant in tourneys than in cash games. If you have an opponent outchipped in a given hand, you have the ability to eliminate that player from the tournament while he or she cannot possibly eliminate you. That alone can provide you an edge in a hand -- an extra way to apply pressure than can be relevant even at the beginning of a hand when the bets are small.
You might want to argue over how best to rank the relative importance of cards, chips, and position, but it's very helpful -- perhaps even eye-opening -- to remember that each can be used as a weapon, either separately or together. And that just like in rock-paper-scissors, we probably aren't going to win a tournament if we try to play using just one of these weapons rather than alternating among all three.
By the way, if you've somehow never played rock-paper-scissors before, here's a neat online version of the game at the New York Times site that allows you to play against a computer that analyzes your patterns to play against you.